Review: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It took me all summer, but I finished reading The Graveyard Book to my children. This was not for lack of interest though, just lots of competition for my children's time.

The Graveyard Book tells the story of Nobody Owens, a boy whose family was killed when he was a baby and he was taken in by the souls resting at the nearby graveyard. Nobody, or Bod for short, grows up among the dead. Along the way he meets some interesting characters and has an opportunity to mete out justice to his family's killer.

I love the way Gaiman writes the dialogue for each character. I'm not much of a read-aloud person, so it was especially welcome to find that characters had easy and unique speech patterns to pick up, from Irish to Scottish, from whiny to haunting. Each character had a unique voice that my children could pick out even without the story prompting as to who the speaker is.

My kids loved the story too! This made it so rewarding to read it to them. Even with long spans between sessions they could easily recall what Bod was last doing, who he was encountering, and they were eager to find out what would happen next.

Thank you, Neil Gaiman, for crafting a story that is now woven into the fabric of my relationship with my children.

View all my reviews